[UPDATE Jan 28, 2014] This problem has been traced to the BIOS implementation of IOMMU on my Gigabyte F2A85X-UP4 motherboard, BIOS ver. F4Disabling the IOMMU BIOS setting allows the Xonar to function, although I am still experiencing audio bugs. It is also not clear if the IOMMU bug is a problem with Mint or a problem with the BIOS.See my most recent post, here: viewtopic.php?f=49&t=118289&start=20#p815650

Hello all,

My sound card is not working.

I introduced myself to linux through mint 13 maya, so I am still fairly new to linux. Recently I upgraded my MoBo, CPU, RAM from an old Athlon AM2 system to a new FM2 system. Compounding that change I also upgraded to mint 14 at the same time.

Two major hardware-software interactions changed. The first is that my PCI wifi card now works (yay, it didn't with 13 & old system). The second is that my dedicated sound card now does not work (darn, it did with 13 & old system).

Here is my dilemma, expressed pictorally:

My sound output device management:

Nothing there!

But my hardware lists shows the card:

The card is an ASUS Xonar DX. Google reveals that there have been historical problems with the ASLO drivers and the Xonar cards, but they should have been long-since dealt with. There were also recommendations from the googlemachine to try Pulseaudio as a solution. This did not work, presumably for the same reason (no hardware output devices listed).

Please help! If further information is required then please be specific on how to attain it.

Last edited by quaid on Tue Jan 28, 2014 5:59 pm, edited 4 times in total.

Are you sure about your hardware model? I looked on the alsa-project website and it lists the Xonar DX as having the AV100 chipset. The Xonar DGX has the CMI8788 chipset. It could of course be wrong. I am using an Xonar DG ing Mint13 which has the same chipset as the DGX. I know you said it works fine in mint 13 for you, but I am, as I type this, upgrading to mint 14.1... So we'll see how it continues to work. I'll update if I have issues.

At any rate what did you do to install it? I followed the instructions here http://www.alsa-project.org/main/index. ... ule-oxygen. When I run alsamixer it shows the sound card, but there are no volume controls. To adjust sound I just use the volume controls inside the GNOME desktop. When I initially installed it I had to also install pavucontrol to make sure nothing was muted, despite being told it would be muted, nothing was. The only issue for me is that the onboard HDA connector doesn't work for my front mic/headphone jack, as the alsa website said.

I double checked since there are so many versions of the Asus Xonar, and yes, I do have the "Xonar DX".

I also remember that Mint 13 recognized this card as the same chipset, the Oxygen HD CMI8788.

The only installation I did was the installation of Mint. This worked for Mint 13 but not for Mint 14. I am reading and pursuing the link you suggested, although kernel compiling, etc. are somewhat out of my league. It isn't clear to me that the driver installation is needed since the hardware is properly detected in the Mint 14 System Information (hardware manager). This suggests to me that drivers were installed, but maybe that is just my ignorance.

HumbleUser wrote:At any rate what did you do to install it? I followed the instructions here http://www.alsa-project.org/main/index. ... ule-oxygen. When I run alsamixer it shows the sound card, but there are no volume controls. To adjust sound I just use the volume controls inside the GNOME desktop. When I initially installed it I had to also install pavucontrol to make sure nothing was muted, despite being told it would be muted, nothing was. The only issue for me is that the onboard HDA connector doesn't work for my front mic/headphone jack, as the alsa website said.

I was not able to follow the instructions. I didn't find "See GIT_Server for instructions on getting and using the latest source from git repositories." to be helpful, or achievable.

I also had problems when in the terminal running their example code:

cd /usr/src mkdir alsa cd alsa cp /downloads/alsa-* .

"mkdir" only functioned when I used "sudo" first. Fine. Done.

"cp/downloads/alsa-* ." didn't work at all. The cp code implies that I'm copying something, and I assume that the "See GIT_Server..." was probably supposed to help me get the files to copy. So you can see that I didn't get very far with that.

However, a linuxmint auto-update did something interesting somewhere along the way. I don't know which update it was specifically, but the hardware now shows up in my sound mixers.

This is an encouraging development, but sadly the device is still silent.Any ideas?

Last edited by quaid on Wed Dec 11, 2013 4:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Are you sure about your hardware model? I looked on the alsa-project website and it lists the Xonar DX as having the AV100 chipset. The Xonar DGX has the CMI8788 chipset.

I have confirmed through web sources that the AV100 on the DX is a rebranded CMI8788. The Xonar DGX is listed on ALSA with the CMI8786 chipset, with the last digit on the CMI chip being a 6 rather than an 8.

possible solution: sometimes it is just that the 4 pin floppy plug isn't pushed home all the way, sometimes the plastic seat on the 4 pins where the plug pushes up to comes forward a bit, and when the plug is pushed on it doesn't have the pins fully in side itself, as such, that plastic seat needs to be pulled back a bit so that the 4 pin plug can be fully pushed onto the pins, this can happen if you unplug it and re-do the plug when doing maintenance etc.

No luck to-date. I have confirmed that the power cable is correctly attached but I have been unable to follow the instructions from the ASLA website.

The instructions "See GIT_Server for instructions on getting and using the latest source from git repositories." links to an unintuitive site that leaves me scratching my head. I have googled this heavily but have not been able to find help. Since that instruction is among the first on the ASLA site, I am not able to proceed with their instructions.

Mint 16 identifies the Xonar DX as "Virtuoso 100 (Xonar DX) Analogue Stereo". I have tried all of the output ports in case the sound is accidentally being redirected to the wrong port, but I do not have a spdif -> analogue converter like was included with the card. I appear to have lost the converter. Additionally, I can see the red SPDIF light blinking from that port. This might indicate that the sound is being incorrectly directed to the digital output rather than the analogue output.

Truly frustrating.

[EDIT] EMI, static noise was a result of not removing the mic line-in from the motherboard's onboard soundcard. Unplugging stopped the EMI.

Last edited by quaid on Wed Dec 11, 2013 4:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Based on the module descriptions, the Virtuoso module should be the correct choice. However, the evidence from my experiences suggests that there is something wrong with Virtuoso. Does anyone know how to switch from one module to another? I would like to try the oxygen module in Mint 16, to eliminate Mint, itself, as a factor.